by Clint Wilson | Feb 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“Donovan, anchor the antenna atop that formation, mother says it’s the only place high enough.”
The mountain jutted up at an odd angle. But it was only more of the non-descript surface of this desolate, lifeless rock. His captain looked at him sternly and he knew there would be no arguing. He grabbed the antenna and slipped it into his belt.
As he trudged away, his spacesuit protecting him from the almost non-existent atmosphere, the hill loomed threateningly. He picked a reasonably flattish path to start his ascent, but the trail quickly became near vertical. He clambered further, using his hands, finding it difficult to get his gloved fingers into many of the cracks.
At one point he found a small plateau and turned around to see the team in the distance. They were tiny white specs. His earpiece crackled. “Everything okay up there? You gotta keep moving son. Mother is reporting meteor activity nearby and we want to blast off ay-sap!”
“On it sir.” He turned and began moving to the left, sweating bullets. Soon enough though he rounded a bend and saw that he had picked the wrong route. Part of the ledge on which he was standing had broken away, leaving nothing but sheer vertical rock. On the other side of the gap the ledge continued. He thought he could probably make the jump without incident yet the consequences of a misjudgment were unthinkable.
His earpiece crackled again. “Can’t see you Donovan. Are you almost there? Mother says we’ve gotta move. Apparently we’re about to get hammered by a major shower. This piss-poor atmosphere won’t help us. You hear me? You moving your ass son?”
Donovan knew he had no other choice, so he took a deep breath and he leapt. And the distance was farther than he had thought, and for a split second, as he hung there in empty space, he knew he had failed, and he closed his eyes tight.
But he thumped down onto solid rock. Surprised he opened his eyes and was shocked to see that the gap in the ledge had somehow repaired itself. Again his captain screamed in his ear. He snapped to and scrambled forward confused.
A few minutes later he crested the summit and there he quickly anchored the antenna. Then as he turned to make his way back he saw a far off glowing streak followed by an explosion. Meteors began to pelt the planet’s surface in the distance. Donovan started to run, a bad idea when descending a steep mountain in a bulky spacesuit.
As the shower thickened and drew closer he ran faster, and then he tripped and spilled headlong out over nothingness, and this time he saw the mountain move. A sudden protrusion of rock jutted out, catching him gently, and then began lowering him toward the stony plain below. He stared wide-eyed, thinking the mountain was collapsing, but then quickly realized to his utter surprise that the whole mass was actually lurching forward!
In another moment he was deposited gently alongside his wild-eyed crewmates. And then as another meteor exploded just meters away, the liquid mountain reared up, and before anyone could question a thing, they found themselves and their landing craft under the protection of a vast stony ceiling. There were muffled explosions above, yet they remained completely unscathed.
And then as quickly as it had started the onslaught stopped, and the rocky ceiling lifted away with a whoosh, revealing the clear dark sky once more. And they all sat stupefied as the living mountain slowly lumbered back toward the horizon.
by Clint Wilson | Feb 7, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“Calm down earthling, we already have most of your recorded history. We believe we know what has happened. You are now an extremely endangered species, so we will not punish you for your crimes.”
“So you acknowledge that what I did was a crime?”
“Well the eradication of one’s own entire people could hardly be categorized as anything else. Although we have suspicions as to why you did it.”
“They were beyond repair, beyond reproach!”
“Agreed. You grew too quickly. It happens, but rarely at such an exponential rate. Who could blame your kind for evolving into the writhing mass of insanity that it became? After all, you went from carbon combustion discovery, then industrialization, to space exploration and complete cyber-integration in almost no time at all. Your people had but a proverbial nanosecond to assimilate their minds to the growth that was happening around them.”
PeterJet11056 paused, then… “So what happens now? Will you take me with you, or leave me here alone?”
“That all depends on the story you tell us. Please recount how you wiped out the dominant intelligent species of your planet.”
PeterJet11056 knew he had no other choice so he began, “Isaac Newton, one of our civilization’s early great thinkers said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” so I am hardly to blame for the technology that allowed me to commit my crime. I watched the net grow until we were nearly one solid mass, yet I kept at my free thinking exercises, avoiding The Bulls wherever I could, always keeping a low profile, until that day I finally developed the proper instruction code.”
“Please define, “instruction code”.”
“The net contained all of humanity, every person on the planet living in cyberspace, and they could all be manipulated by code. That was how the world government controlled us. A tweak here and we changed our entertainment programs. A nudge there and suddenly we were thinking differently about our political choices.”
“But why this need for control? You had achieved all that may be achieved by a physically tangent race. You wanted for nothing.”
“Except power that is.”
For once the alien presence was speechless.
PeterJet11056 ventured, “You know of power hunger? Of greed?”
“We know of this. This is the ugliest trait for any species to possess in all the known galaxies.”
“Then you understand! Our world had become a gray faceless empty entity. There was not one micron of goodness left among us. It was time to eradicate this planet of its parasite.”
“Yet you remain.”
“Believe it or not it was unintended.”
“We believe you.”
“So you know then, it wasn’t that I couldn’t commit suicide, it was just that I was unable. Whoever enters the instruction code is immune to its commands, impervious to its demands. A seriously flawed and dangerous safeguard if you want my humble opinion.”
PeterJet11056’s final words echoed down through the corridors of the cyber-connection that the aliens had provided upon their arrival.
For a moment, nearly two full nanoseconds, there was nothing, then… “We are satisfied with your answer. We shall take you with us.”
“Really?” The age-old program that had once been human became excited. What will become of me?”
“Not to worry, we believe there his hope for you yet. We will connect you with the best minds of our species. Eventually you may once again achieve physical existence. Then our cloning crews can begin with creating you a mate. Yes I do believe that you PeterJet11056 will be the father of the new human race.”
by Clint Wilson | Jan 25, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
He was the result of a human experiment of gigantic proportions. Why had they done it? Because they could, the way their ancestors had once bred dogs into all shapes and sizes, these scientists of the new grand era tweaked and fiddled at the molecular level, splicing and manipulating genes to their satisfaction.
In a sort of sick and twisted pun they had named him “Gene” at birth. He now resented it with a passion. Their tampering, which had started over a hundred years ago, was the result of the now brooding solitary figured seated beneath the starry night sky, high on a grassy hill overlooking the town below.
He reflected over it all. His great grandparents had been chosen for their size. She had been over six feet and he nearly seven. They were one of dozens of freakishly large couples brought into the program from all around the world; brought in and “tampered” with, just so a handful of so-called brainiacs could sit around and titter like school boys as they watched their devilish experiment unfold.
But of that original group, nobody could argue that the first babies hadn’t been amazing. His own grandfather had been one of the biggest, over twenty pounds. The scientists studied them all as they developed throughout their childhoods. And the world applauded as that first generation quickly sprouted to unbelievable proportions.
Gene’s grandfather had smashed an age-old record as he surpassed nine feet tall at just fifteen. But he wasn’t finished there. He topped out at eleven-foot-six and, at his peak, weighed over nine hundred pounds. The growth accelerations were beyond any of the scientists’ wildest dreams. But did they hesitate in the name of safety or humanity? No of course they did not. They wanted to push this experiment as far as they could. And now they had succeeded in doing so.
The giant women from that first generation, who averaged seven-feet-six and about four hundred pounds apiece, the ones that could conceive anyway, (less than half could) still had many difficulties birthing the thirty-plus pound babies of the second generation.
Gene’s father was another record breaker. By the time of his death at forty-six he was a sixteen-foot-tall nineteen-hundred-pound wonder. He and his people were impressive to the rest of the world to say the least, but unfortunately they were not very long-lived. Suffering a massive heart attack at such a seemingly young age, he had still outlasted over half of his schoolmates.
But what had really killed the experiment in the end was that almost none of the second generation had been able to conceive. Gene was one of only three born. The other two had succumbed before reaching adulthood. At twenty-two, he was old, and the last of the failed third and final generation.
He sat there on the hill with his knees drawn up, the largest man to have ever lived. Gene the giant weighed nearly four thousand pounds and stood twenty-one feet and nine inches tall. He wore special clothes manufactured by the government, and lived in a converted airplane hanger. Gene had no one else he could relate to and was glad for it. He wished this desolate life upon no other person.
Then suddenly an old lingering chest pain flared up, and his pumpkin-sized heart convulsed once, and then stuttered out its final exhausted beat. He simply let go his knees and fell backward. And as a spreading warmth washed over him, he thumped down mightily onto the grassy meadow and looked up at the stars, happy at long last.
by Clint Wilson | Jan 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
We’d found some bizarre planets before, but this one required a whole new category of its own. I maneuvered my one-man exploratory craft toward the strange surface. The rest of the crew waited aboard Wanderer in high orbit. Some called this place “Swiss Cheese World”, others… “The Wiffle Ball”.
Life form readings were strong yet muffled. I could see nothing except endless klicks of porous rock punctured by countless holes of all sizes. They ranged in diameter from microscopic to gargantuan. Yet they revealed nothing but the inky blackness within.
As I approached a really big one my comm crackled to life. “This looks like it Lieutenant, sensors can’t find a bottom. Prepare to dive.”
I skimmed along the porous surface a few dozen meters above the alien stone and followed the contour as the ground fell away into the massive black crater. My floodlights kicked in and I continued to monitor my descent into the depths. Then suddenly I reported, “Wanderer, I have another crater in the side of the main shaft. Looks like it heads off horizontally roughly southwest. Shall I investigate?”
“Negative,” came the reply. “Maintain course.”
I continued downward, passing more and more offshoot tunnels as I went. Finally, after several hundred klicks, the way below appeared to narrow and bend to the north. I reported this and was told to continue for as long as it appeared safe. Onward I raced laterally, the planet’s surface now far, far above me, nothing but my green floodlights showing me the way through the abyss. Suddenly the tunnel widened into a larger chamber, the black ceiling a kilometer above me. I reported to Wanderer that another enormous downward crater lay ahead, one that might enable my further inward exploration. It was immediately decided that I should proceed.
I dove into the blackness again, and found a near-vertical shaft that ran for almost another hundred klicks until it angled toward near horizontal as well. But I continued to happen upon other openings that allowed my further inward progress. And then finally, when I was almost out of radio contact with Wanderer, I saw something… a dim light below. I reported this and the faint voice told me to proceed with extreme caution.
They didn’t have to tell me. Sweat poured from my forehead as I approached the growing light at the bottom of the hole. Suddenly my eyes opened wide. “Wanderer, I didn’t notice it before but my sensors are picking up a damn near breathable atmosphere, and it’s getting thicker!” My earpiece crackled but I could make out no discernable communication. On I raced, toward the end of the well, toward the brightening light.
I cared not that I had lost contact with the command ship. I had taken this job because I was an explorer through and through. I grinned as my little vessel burst forth into the interior of the hollow planet. I laughed aloud as I suddenly soared over endless alien jungle, and then wept openly as I spotted what looked like primitive villages below!
I looked up into the hot glow of the massive rotating molten core suspended high above like a miniature sun, locked there in the exact center of this amazing world’s gravity. And I shouted, “Hooray! This is it! This is what it’s all about!!!”
Oh you can be assured, I would eventually retrace my steps back up through the porous labyrinth… but for now I just wanted to remain a little bit longer, and bask in the glorious golden glow, of my fantastic discovery!
by Clint Wilson | Jan 4, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The other twenty-nine prisoners of Asteroid Mine 119F stood around me in a tight circle, their faces besieged by both fear and anger.
Henderson, almost sixty, yet fifteen kilos my better and as hard as the rock around us, screamed at me, spit flying.
“Why did you do it Nitro? You bastard, you’ve killed us all!” A chorus of mob agreement accompanied him.
I wiped a glob of Henderson’s spittle from my chin and growled back, “Well who here is dead then? A show of hands boys, who’s all been killed?”
For a moment the men could say nothing. They were shaken from the mighty blast for certain, some even slightly banged up, but it was true that not one prisoner had died in the successful escape from our oppressors that I had just so recently engineered.
Henderson puffed up again, “Yeah? Well Doc says we’re hurtling out of control toward Sirius!”
I stood up from the bench and faced Henderson nearly eye to eye, and with great conviction I began to save my skin. “Yes it’s true, the entire cellblock, still attached to a big piece of 119F is now tumbling away from the asteroid belt.” My voice quavered but the mob was silent for the moment so I went on. “And yes, we are in a decaying orbit that can only end when this entire prison turns into a molten lump as it succumbs to the gravity of the star.” Again there was shouting, I hurried on. “But fellas, do you know how long that will take?”
Doc looked up from the calculations on his handheld, “Actually I have it here boys. It won’t be anytime soon.”
I grew excited. “Yes! Listen to him! This orbit won’t completely decay for another two-hundred years!”
Henderson stepped back and glanced over at Doc’s handheld. “Is that right?”
I didn’t wait for Doc to answer, but instead jumped up onto the bench, adopting it as my soapbox. “Listen boys, we’re free! As free as we’re ever gonna get anyway. Think about it. The guards are all dead now,” I spat in disgust, “and good riddance to those bastards!”
Now I was greeted with noises of approval from the group. Not one of us was missing the stinging bite of their taser-whips. I was on a roll and kept going. “They’re all space debris now and there aint nobody from the colonies who’s gonna come looking for a bunch of condemned bastards like us when there’s obviously been a catastrophic mining accident at the old prison outpost!”
They were really settling down now, I could feel it. Doc looked up from his computer and said, “Actually, hat’s off to you Nitro. Your precision was genius. You managed to separate the cellblock and supply stores in tact, yet completely obliterated the guard pod, impressive indeed.”
“Ah Doc my boy, I had a lot of help from a fissure in old 119F that suited our purposes just dandy. Serves them hacks right for wanting their housing so separate from us rabble!”
Now the murmurs from the crowd were on my side. A voice rang out, “So we’re gonna be okay like this?”
I patted the ventilation system behind me. “This baby will keep things temperate for as long as we all live.” Then I pulled my final surprise from my belt. “But don’t worry fellas, I wouldn’t condemn us to an eternity without conjugal visits!”
They could all see that I held the keycard to the sexbot chamber. A cheer rose up and the mob carried me away on their shoulders chanting my name.
